Weakened by a series of strokes since 1922, Lenin had already been sidelined from active governance when he died at his dacha outside Moscow. His body was embalmed and placed on permanent display in a mausoleum on Red Square, a shrine that still draws visitors a century later. His death set off a bitter succession contest that Stalin ultimately won.
Lenin's final years were marked by physical collapse and political isolation; a stroke in March 1923 left him unable to speak, and he spent his last months largely confined to his estate at Gorki, watched over by his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya. In his last writings, a testament dictated to secretaries, he warned the party of Stalin's excessive power and urged his removal from the post of General Secretary — advice the party leadership suppressed and ignored.
Within hours of his death, the Politburo decided to embalm his body rather than bury it, over the objections of his widow and some Bolshevik purists who considered the practice a betrayal of Marxist materialism. Chemists Vladimir Vorobiov and Boris Zbarsky developed a technique to preserve the corpse indefinitely. The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad within days. Stalin, positioning himself as chief mourner and loyal disciple, used the funeral rites to consolidate the image of ideological heir, outmaneuvering rivals like Trotsky who was recovering from illness in the Caucasus and did not return in time for the funeral.
Key people: Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin